«The letter sent May 21 to the Justice Department's civil division takes up Sunil Aggarwal's request to move psilocybin from Schedule I to Schedule II and links it to the executive order signed by Donald Trump in April. A letter sent May 21 to the U.S. Department of Justice has revived pressure on the DEA to resolve AIMS Institute's Sunil Aggarwal's petition to move psilocybin from Schedule I to Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act. The brief, signed by attorney Shane Pennington, recalls that the dossier was forwarded to the Department of Health and Human Services in August 2025 and that there has been no definitive public response since then.
The novelty, however, is procedural and political, not regulatory. As of May 23, 2026, psilocybin has not been reclassified, the DEA has not announced a new decision, and the letter does not amount to an approval. What the document does do is attempt to take advantage of the window opened by the executive order signed by Donald Trump on April 18 on treatments for serious mental illness.
According to the letter, the original petition was filed in 2022 with the idea of facilitating access to psilocybin in palliative care for terminally ill patients. Pennington argues that the delay is difficult to justify because the FDA has already extensively reviewed the evidence on some psychedelics and because the White House itself has asked to expedite the regulatory pathway for compounds that have received relevant designations within the clinical research circuit.
That is the crux of the current pulse. The April executive order does not itself reclassify psilocybin, but it does direct agencies to accelerate research and study pathways for certain psychedelics under evaluation. The letter attempts to convert this change in political tone into concrete administrative pressure on a dossier that had been blocked for months.
Here again, a material limit should be set. The document expresses the position of the petitioning party and not that of the DEA or HHS. Moreover, even a hypothetical reclassification to Schedule II would not amount to blanket legalization or immediate clinical availability: it would still require federal controls, regulatory development, and, where appropriate, subsequent decisions on indications, access, and medical oversight.»
